Friday 30 January 2009

A cloud of words for Weatherspoon:

wordle.net

Thursday 29 January 2009

I found out that we were in a recession when I was a kid in 1988 because Heather on my bowling league said so. We were eating fried cheese sticks between frames when she whispered, “Did you hear?” I thought she was going to tell me about Burke and Kim making out behind the video games again. She had the same devious look in her eyes. “We’re in a recession!” she squeaked. “Yeah, my dad said something about that,” I said dryly, dipping my cheese stick into a side of marinara.

Everybody was talking about layoffs in the café I sat in at lunch today, and this time I was all ears. In fact, I may be far too up-to-date on the situation. It’s sort of cathartic I suppose, to recap with co-workers by ticking off statistics if you’re not a part of the number. “Starbucks layed off 6,700 people, and Boeing’s cutting 10,000 jobs,” a balding business-casual huffed to his friend at the table next to me.

Phrases including “all bets are off” “completely wiped out” and “it’s a sign of the times” followed. As a casual listener, it’s completely unnerving to hear this sort of banter. D and I both work for small companies, and we’re hedging our bets that we’re in the best places we can be right now. And, hands in the air, we’re ready for bad news any day like everyone else.

But really, I can only ponder the not yet so much before I start drawing birds with four legs and graphs of imaginary weather trends. It’s not that I’m especially out of touch. Just coping.

In the car last night, we were listening to M83, to the song Graveyard Girl from the Saturdays=Youth album. A girl has this little monologue around the bridge and says, “Waiting for somebody to love me. Waiting for somebody to kiss me. I’m only fifteen years old, and I feel it’s already too late to live. Don’t you?” It’s so tender, almost too tender, but there’s this lovely resolve. The music becomes hazy and endless, and then you feel fresh, teenaged hope.

Wednesday 28 January 2009

I’ve drawn a line graph of how average weather feels month-by-month in both Seattle and Chicago. Nothing based on actual averages, but more of a resident index. Me? I’m sticking around the Northwest. Thank you, mild winters.

Tuesday 27 January 2009

Where I grew up as a kid:

Where else I grew up as an adult:

Monday 26 January 2009

In 1996, a group of friends including Michael Stipe and Grant Lee Phillips got together in a hotel room and decided to write a haiku a day for a year. Soft Skull published a book of favorite haiku from the experiment called The Haiku Year. Thanks to Google, you can sample it here.

I used to write a lot of haiku in college. Western style, so I never worried about the 5-7-5 rule. And I’m realizing that journaling, freelancing, and blogging don’t fill the same space as writing haiku. I’ll yawn and stretch and try a few now. It’s been years since I’ve done this, so I’m pretty rusty, but here goes.

If you’re so inclined, try writing three short, descriptive lines about your day today, and send them to me in a comment.

*

Not eating much of anything
except everything
Waiting for his test results

Can’t lift my arm high enough
to grab a sweater in the closet
Damn tetnus shot

Buttoning my flannel shirt
with the lights off
like I’m back high school

Sitting on the couch
eating salted almonds
Feels like vacation

Friday 23 January 2009

Has anyone noticed? The lights stay on until 5:30 now. Almost a whole hour ahead of where we were a month ago. It may as well be lux perpetua.

Tonight I’ll be with friends at a bar. Looking out back, here’s what we’ll see, sitting around while the planet keeps on deciding to move a little closer towards ceaseless light:

Thursday 22 January 2009

In case you’re hungry, a post I wrote on food finds during a recent trip to Prague went up on Asthmatic Kitty’s sidebar today.

Starting in the next week or two I’ll be doing a regular food column for AK. I’m looking for foodies to contribute posts, so if you’re a Weatherspoon reader living in another part of the country and are interested in writing about food issues in your city, review restaurants, compile lists of the best places for coffee or microbrews, etc. for Asthmatic Kitty, be in touch.

*

Also, the company I work for just launched an excellent Etsy site featuring letterpressed and handmade novelties, including the coolest door hangers on the planet.

Wednesday 21 January 2009

My house meets the White House.

Tuesday 20 January 2009: Hello, Mr. President!

Monday 19 January 2009

Besides hoping the ceasefire sticks and listening to a few Dr. King speeches, I can’t think about much today except for the inauguration.

Like a lot of people, I slid from checking the news every dozen minutes before the election back to my usual Morning Edition, All Things Considered loop. And now I’m back where I began, popping around the internet for any news, images, or video clips of Obama speaking about this or that.

A favorite find, thanks to the New York Times.

Friday 16 December 2009

wintercraft.

Thursday 15 January 2009

I don’t know about you, but the holidays left me restless, needing a good many walks. I spent my lunch hour today walking down First Ave. from Pike Place Market to Pioneer Square, towards Elliott Bay Books. I like this particular walk the most in summer. Pioneer Square is more cobblestoned and mortared than most any other part of Seattle. On the few days that the sun really bakes the city, why not stand in the very heart of all that heat?

The best walking is done outside, and books are on shelves inside. But there’s something about going into Elliott Bay that makes me feel like my heart and lungs are outside of my skin, that the slim wood floor is a very soft ceiling. This store could be a whole galaxy, the way it can float you around and spin time.

They recently remodeled the café into a space that looks so typical Seattle—light wood, clean lines, cupcakes in glass display cases. But the cool thing is that the café is in the basement of an ancient brick building, so all the new that could be bland becomes careful and balanced.

Instead of sticking around for coffee I browsed for books, then headed toward my office. On the way, I spotted a newish café called Stella on First and University.

The couple who own the place, Rob and Josie, were working the bar. The long, narrow space has big windows, imperfect original tile, a chandelier and a tin roof. I ordered an americano and bantered with Josie for a few minutes. Sitting down, I watched as Rob called customers bella in this very unsleazy way. A heartened bella. He waved at dogs and babies and made jokes with his wife about her persnickety Italian parents.

I am head over heals for Stella now. For a sometimes cold and often damp city, Rob and Josie are the perfect transplants. They’re from a warm place, and that warmth still hasn’t worn down. If you live in Seattle, make plans to meet a friend at Stella, and I’ll put money on it. You’ll both be charmed.

Wednesday 14 January 2009

It’s like closing up a summer house, when the stillness of winter washes over cities. The snow Seattle was handed around the holidays made the buildings downtown look like they were covered with old floral sheets, windy across what could have been wicker chairs and wooden tables post-Labor Day.

My grandparents used to have this table at their lake house in Michigan with open-mouthed lions perched stately on each of its corners. I used to feed the lions bits of hot dog or spaghetti at our last dinner just before Labor Day. When the snow melted and we’d return in the Spring, I’d run into the house right after I arrived and check each lion for dried up bits of food, my mark from the year before. What I’d left waiting all winter for a warm hand.

Tuesday 13 January 2009

I didn’t grow up rich, but as a kid I used to stay in rich-people hotels in Chicago with my parents. Why we did this is another story entirely involving craps, the band Megadeath, and a horrible craving for Ritz burgers.

No no no, don’t get the wrong idea, that I had a wildly privileged country club youth. I was then and am now firmly middle-class, and the Ritz Carlton has faded into a fuzzy, somehow embarrassing part of my childhood.

So all I ever wanted to do in these rich hotels was swim. And the Ritz has this palatial, dome-roofed lap pool. To get there, you have to walk through a locker room filled with wet saunas and Q-tip jars on vanities and hair blowers.

Inevitably the locker room was also filled with old, crinkly women completely in the nude, just hanging out after water aerobics. Hordes of them prancing around from the wet sauna to the shower, diffusing hair or putting on earrings. Nobody wore a towel, I supposed because these women were filthy rich. I reasoned that, when you very likely had bathtubs full of money back home in Aspen, why would you need to hide behind terry cloth robes with embroidered lions on the breast?

Today at the gym, I walked in the locker room and right in front of me there was a woman, naked and sort of prancing between the lockers. In the locker room, women are naked all the time. And it’s a really beautiful thing. All this skin of all these colors come in different shapes and moves differently. We all become one woman somehow, which feels very honest.

But this lady today, the way she was arched and fluttering around put my mind back into my body as a kid. I’m at the Ritz, wearing a bathing suit with a big pineapple on the front, trying to tip toe around a happy-sad parade into cool, deep water.

Monday 12 January 2009

Friday 9 January 2009

Man, I’m ready for summer.

June 2007, near Tieton, Washington:

Thursday 8 January 2009

People are burning leaves, ironing pants, peeling vegetables–really existing next to the abyss. Turns out that the tallest part of the ocean is devastatingly close to big, weighty cities like Tokyo and Manila.

At thirty-six thousand feet, the Challenger Deep in the Pacific is the darkest, deepest part of the ocean.

If you sliced Mt. Everest off its base, flipped it on its back and pegged it into this oceanic trench, water would still cover the mountain’s peak by a mile.

Which I used to not be able to run as a kid. I mean, the first time I ran a mile I went out for margaritas. It was a big deal. And one mile is just a pinch of salt on top of all that earth and water.

Wednesday 7 January 2009

Tuesday 6 January 2009

When did the weather get so precious?

Monday 5 January 2009

Wow. Kansas really is flatter than a pancake.

Friday 2 January 2009

I propose a toast to the thousand souls that ran for miles and plunged into Lake Washington. Man. I’m bewitched.

Count me in for twenty ten.

Friday 1 January 2009

Growing up, my dad used to floss in our car while driving home from dinner. Over time, our windshield would become peppered with bits of steak and broccoli that looked like tiny neon bugs splattered across the glass.

I would watch him floss in the rear view mirror. He’d be at the wheel and I’d be in the backseat. Once, I remember his fingers being wrapped so tightly around the floss that they turned bright pink, plumping out around the string. I stared at his hands, then eyes in the mirror, and for a second our faces looked the very same.

That’s how I feel about the new year. There’s this strange mix of familiarity and tension, especially now–with the whole world flipping, flopping, and boiling down.

But more than that, I feel resolved about the tough and sweet year that’s passed. Went for coffee today with D and month by month we wrote out everything notable that happened in 2008. Things like friends losing parents and gaining children, where we were on election night, travels to Prague and Vashon, playing pool on my birthday.

Thinking about all the weather that will travel from west to east this year, starting close to Capitol Hill and hitting the places I’ve lived and the people I love across the plains, over the Smokies and to the Atlantic makes everything that’s to come, scary and tenuous as it may be, seem beautiful, messy, and really really close.

Thursday 31 December 2009

The Space Needle, hiding out before midnight fireworks.

Happy New Year.